This bird at the San Diego Zoo the other weekend kept me entertained for several minutes with its futile attempts to win over a female of the wrong species with its mating ritual – a high-pitched croak accompanied by a quick head bob.
Few things are more amusing than perversions of nature – absurd moments that the razor sharp edge of natural selection is usually so good at excising.
Sometimes, though, a little interbreeding can get the evolutionary engines churning. Research shows that the divergence of the human lineage from that of chimpanzees may have taken around 4 million years. That our X chromosomes diverged around 5.4 million years ago means for millions of years our ancestors were interbreeding with those of chimpanzees.
Watching this bird’s futile little dance, though, I find comfort knowing that at least I never tried to have sex with a duck.
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